A very good video by dodgykebab

[Valgatur]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsODRe46IDQ

Soo.... turns out the letter send to Nost admins from Blizzard was against the law, but it worked....

edit: nvm im stupid, didnt realize he was talking about the laws in England

[Vaulken]

This made me chuckle

[Zoey_Urbina]

It made me chuckle a bit as well. The video could've been helpful to an extent but in it's current form it's not useful in any sense of the word as it'll most likely lead to a lot of miss-information. Not only isn't this French law, he didn't even mention European law. Then there's the fact that if we were to assume that he was correct, defending against a civil lawsuit or against the law itself depending of what french laws were infracted and what type of suit it is, would cost a fortune nonetheless. Several tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands would've been required, that's even if you win. Disregarding the millions Blizzard would demand if Nostalrius were to lose.

With the lack of knowledge about said legal letter. Miss-information is our greatest enemy and right now, Dodgykebaab is doing a lot more harm than good.

However, he is correct that in most European countries a Terms of Use/Service and End User License Agreement cannot and will not supersede the law but it's not against the law to write them in such a way. Said infraction paragraphs will simply be removed and on some occasions, the entire agreement is nullified. Agreements such as these are rarely used against private servers within Europe as laws tend to make them useless in a legal case. But that doesn't mean that the private server itself didn't break any actual laws since it depends on where it's hosted and where the owners are located, what laws exists in said location(s). Both the host and owners, as stated in the announcement, would've been targeted by Blizzard. (If) the owners of Nostalrius broke even one French law and in this case, 'Blizzard' were capable of proving it. Then the owners are technically considered criminals and it's not a simple lawsuit anymore as they'd be facing the charges of said crimes.

Dodgykebaab =/= Causing more harm than good.

[digpoe]

It made me chuckle a bit as well. The video could've been helpful to an extent but in it's current form it's not useful in any sense of the word as it'll most likely lead to a lot of miss-information. Not only isn't this French law, he didn't even mention European law. Then there's the fact that if we were to assume that he was correct, defending against a civil lawsuit or against the law itself depending of what french laws were infracted and what type of suit it is, would cost a fortune nonetheless. Several tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands would've been required, that's even if you win. Disregarding the millions Blizzard would demand if Nostalrius were to lose.

With the lack of knowledge about said legal letter. Miss-information is our greatest enemy and right now, Dodgykebaab is doing a lot more harm than good.

However, he is correct that in most European countries a Terms of Use/Service and End User License Agreement cannot and will not supersede the law but it's not against the law to write them in such a way. Said infraction paragraphs will simply be removed and on some occasions, the entire agreement is nullified. Agreements such as these are rarely used against private servers within Europe as laws tend to make them useless in a legal case. But that doesn't mean that the private server itself didn't break any actual laws since it depends on where it's hosted and where the owners are located, what laws exists in said location(s). Both the host and owners, as stated in the announcement, would've been targeted by Blizzard. (If) the owners of Nostalrius broke even one French law and in this case, 'Blizzard' were capable of proving it. Then the owners are technically considered criminals and it's not a simple lawsuit anymore as they'd be facing the charges of said crimes.

Dodgykebaab =/= Causing more harm than good.

At least it means that hosting a server in the UK won't actually get you into trouble. You'd just have to be smart about it and not fall for the scaremongering.

[Zoey_Urbina]

Incorrect. Just because the Terms of Use/Service & EULA is nullified doesn't mean that you didn't break several copyright laws in regards to the Trademarks. There's a lot of things that the Trademark protects and a private server in turn violates. I can sit here and just ramble on about how all the characters within World of Warcraft is protected by several trademarks. Thrall, Jaina, Van Cleef and so on. Let alone the world files, names of zones, models and pretty much every NPC in the game and to some extent the quests and possibly even the lore, although lore is technically in a gray zone.

All this is protected by trademarks which is then protected by laws in the respective countries, including the UK. Blizzard has the legal right to take these actions but it's still an immoral action to take and I apologize for the bluntness and rudeness in the next couple of words, Blizzard is still retarded for fucking over their community. Anyway, don't listen to Dodgykebaab when it comes to legality, don't even listen to me. Pay and contact a lawyer in the respective country that specializes in trademark/copyright cases and educate yourself that way.

There are obviously countries where they don't necessarily care much about copyright and trademarks and that's where you should go to host them. It's worth stressing this; If the server host releases the information of the private server owner and said owner is located in Denmark then the owner will have infringed Denmark's laws and face the crimes under Denmark's system. Regardless if the host server was in the North Pole.

Anyway, it's been pointed out repeatedly, Blizzard at this moment in time is within their legal right, even though in my opinion, they shouldn't have that right as much of the content in Vanilla is essentially abandon-ware.

In case anyone got a bit freaked out, it's also worth mentioning that in most countries in Europe, the end user (players) are within their legal right to play on private servers as our laws nullifies the ToU/S & EULA to an extent, so we're safe to play on servers, but not to run them. --- However, Blizzard has the right to terminate you from all their services (Battle.net, WoW, Diablo 3, etc)

TL;DR:

• Private servers are illegal due to trademarks and copyright which in turn is protected by laws in the respective country. If an owner is located in a country where trademarks and copyright is enforced, then said owner is viable for criminal charges. Regardless of server host location.
• Even if a copyright lawsuit is bogus, which in this case I highly doubt it was due to it being in France, it would still cost several hundreds of thousands to defend yourself against a bogus or non-bogus claim.
• ToU/S & EULA does not supersede the law.
• Blizzard is stupid for attacking their own community.
• Blizzard's action against a non profit organization like Nostalrius was legal but also incredibly immoral.

That's pretty much all I have to say about it. Bold text being the most important.

[Mird]

Blizzard pulled a textbook patent troll.

They do not provide the service, but threaten a lawsuit against someone who does, because they "own" IP.
Even if server side was coded from scratch and all clients were bought legally.
If Blizzard fails in a court it's still going to cost an unreasonable amount of time and money for the other side.

That's just another example how retarded software copyright is.

[Potatomaster]

The point of that is that whether the lawsuit is bogus or not is irrelevant.

What blizzard can do is pump huge money into hiring lawyers, and the nost dev team would have to also spend a huge sum of money defending themselves (which they do not have). Clearly they did not want to risk having to pay DENBTS for the rest of their lives, so they shut it down. Completely understandable.

It helps thought if the server is hosted in Russia or something . I believe warmane keeps getting these DMCA letters and they just trash them, nothing happens.

It would actually be a VERY interesting case to see if someone actually went throught the hassle and fought blizzard on it.

[Zoey_Urbina]

Exactly, it doesn't matter whether it's bogus or not. Defending it would be impossible for a private person unless said person is essentially rich. Dodgykebaab didn't state many of these important things in the video, extremely important things at that. Yet he said and I quote "And another popular server will receive a threatening letter. I just hope next time the server owners were more aware how the law works before shitting their pants and packing up shop." Everything Dodgykebaab said in the video was pretty much useless and complete miss-information in regards to Nostalrius and the legal scene around private servers in general.

It's clear that he's incompetent when it comes to the law and how the systems work and the hilarious thing is that he said that quote, even after stating that the laws cited is how it works in the UK and not other countries. AND EVEN if it worked exactly like this in France, Nostalrius would've still been destroyed by Blizzard. Citing a law about how to nullify a electronic agreement that is rarely used in legal cases anyway, does not get rid of all the other laws in regards to copyright and trademarks that were infringed upon.

Right now I think he's just trying to get views more than anything else. Sadly, at the cost of everyone in the Nostalrius community and the private server scene in general as he's providing completely inaccurate information 90% of the time.

[Dr. Doom]

How is the WoW trademark infringed by private servers? Private servers are targeted due to copyrighted material.
They aren't using "World of Warcraft" or related terms to push a competing product forward.

[ceoddyn]

Let dodgy run his channel any coverage right now is good coverage. It doesn't matter whether somebody is completely misinformed which Dodgy is not, what matters is which side they fall on.

You can't say this is an open and shut book case because there is no such thing it doesn't matter whether they infringed copyright. What comes to bear on this case is the amount of money possessed by Blizzard and by Nostalrius. From that you can come to a legal decision on who was in the right.

If you think this is about copyright, nothing hosted on the server is infringing on that. Everything is recreated by hand. Furthermore the game is abandonware because Blizzard no longer host's servers. If Nostalrius had a shitload more money these are literally facts they could have entered into court. If anything the players are infringing copyright by downloading the content database of the game and using that. We're all sick sick criminals.

Lastly, if you hosted in a country that wasn't retarded, yes you could ultimately avoid Blizzard's legal team. If you took even minimal precautions to protect your identities as admins you could also just up and move countries if you ever even got tracked down. There would be no catching you. Nostalrius seriously failed us here. You almost might guess that they purposefully got caught in order to provoke this whole situation we're in now.